Posted: 7/6/2013 Updated/Revised: 12/18/2018, 9/22/2016
Update Of 12/18/2018
The Smithsonian Magazine just published this article about this historic event. The article is fairly balanced and researched if you consider that this magazine often publishes rather leftist articles.
Among other things this article highlights that the factory was quite modern and well equipped and not to be confused with sweatshops of the period. “Triangle had modern well-maintained equipment, including hundreds of belt-driven sewing machines mounted on long tables and run from floor-mounted shafts.”
“... Like many other garment shops, Triangle had experienced fires that were quickly extinguished with water from pre-filled buckets that hung on the walls. Neither the owners, nor the landlord, invested in extra firefighting systems like sprinklers. While the contents of the factory were highly combustible, the building itself was considered fireproof (and survived the fire without structural damage). Triangle dealt with fire hazards to their equipment and inventory by buying insurance. Workplace safety in this period was not yet a priority.” (Emphasis added)
What the article does not say is whether there were water buckets hanging from the wall of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. If no, why not?
In this article, we also find a link to the Cornell University story of the event here. This story is very much tainted by the usual scapegoat the capitalists narrative. Very disappointing for an ivy league university!
Update Of 9/22/2013
Just watched again an episode of the great PBS documentary on New York. In this episode (No. 4, I believe), it was reported that the first female U.S. secretary of labor (and first ever female appointed to the cabinet and longest serving secretary of labor) called the Triangle Fire the beginning of the New Deal. It was Frances Perkins, an appointee of the worst president of the 20th century, the socialist Franklin D. Roosevelt!
Original Post With Updates (If Any)
Relevance From Today’s Perspective
Well, the world news were covering at length in late April 2012 the collapsed garment worker factory in Bangladesh were more than 150 workers died.
American Experience
One is not surprised that the Public Broadcasting Service aired a documentary on the famous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire event as part of their American Experience series. It premiered on 3/27/2012. I recently watched it (7/5/2013) for the first time (Caution: Possibly disturbing pictures and eye witness reports etc.). Nevertheless, I highly recommend to watch it.
The Tragic Accident
I will not go here into the details of this horrible event of 1911 itself. The above mentioned documentary; the website by PBS accompanying this documentary with teacher resources; and the Wikipedia entry about it provide some background.
The Aftermath
Sorry to disappoint the reader, but how proponents of big government used/abused this tragic accident to expand big government control over private businesses in the following years is such an important case study to deserve a separate blog post. This event was the opportunity, excuse, and occasion for big government advocates to become busy.
Government Failure Cover Up
Law Enforcement Did Not Prevent Brutality Against Protesters
By blaming the owners of these factories, government conveniently distracted from the fact that police officers were beating up striking seamstresses, that owner’s were able to hire goons to ‘handle’ strikers and so on. Some of this is nicely shown in the PBS documentary. In those days protests by garment workers were frequent.
The brutality against the protesters was so severe that rich women of the New York high society became concerned. The PBS documentary mentions two of them, one was the daughter of J.P. Morgan, i.e. Anne Tracy Morgan.
The Fire Department Lacked Appropriate Equipment
Not only that, as the PBS documentary so keenly shows, the New York fire department did not have the equipment to extinguish fires above the sixth floor or to rescue people trapped by a fire above the sixth floor. The Triangle factory was on the 8th floor of a 10 story building. Why was that? The PBS documentary is absolutely mute on this point. Perhaps, had the fire department had more adequate equipment fewer workers would have died in the fire?
Building Codes And Permitting
In the Wikipedia entry we read “the single exterior fire escape, which city officials had allowed Asch to erect instead of the required third staircase. It was a flimsy and poorly anchored iron structure which may have been broken before the fire.”
So were existing building codes violated and city government tolerated or ignored that?
A Possible Inept Prosecution Of The Case
According to the PBS documentary and the Wikipedia entry, the two owners were indicted on charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter and the prosecution failed to prove sufficiently that the two owners “knew the exit doors were locked at the time in question.” What were these prosecutors thinking? Perhaps that these two owners came down from their office above locked this exit door and then they escaped via the roof? Did these moronic prosecutors learn anything from the so called “PS General Slocum” passenger steam boat fire of 1904 where more than a 1,000 passengers died? It was the “worst disaster in the New York area's worst disaster in terms of loss of life until the September 11, 2001 attacks”. The captain of the boat “was convicted. He was found guilty on one of three charges: criminal negligence, failing to maintain proper fire drills and fire extinguishers. He was sentenced to ten years imprisonment. He spent three years and six months at Sing Sing prison … before he was pardoned by President Taft” in 1912. If years later an Al Capone can be criminally indicted on tax evasion …
The Cause Of The Fire
The Official Version
The PBS documentary and Wikipedia refer the conclusion of the official fire department investigation which said “that the likely cause of the fire was the disposal of an unextinguished match or cigarette butt in the scrap bin, which held two months' worth of accumulated cuttings by the time of the fire.”
I did not see any mentioning of an investigation into a possible intentional cause of this fire. It seems there was no investigation at all who caused the fire.
Some Speculation
I don’t want to engage in any conspiracy theories here. However, as the PBS documentary occasionally shows these were times when Socialists were very active among these garment factory workers. Street protests by these workers were frequent. We also know that anarchists were quite active sometimes resorting to violence etc. at the turn of the century. There were apparently links between Socialists, anarchists, and labor unions.
Now, here we have two owners of a garment factory in hotbed New York city of 1911 tenaciously refusing to recognize labor unions and opposing closed union shops (so, e.g., the PBS documentary). Could it be that this fire was not purely an accident? It is quite possible that the person, who we speculate, perpetrated this fire perished in this inferno, because he or she underestimated the spread etc. of the fire or the quickly ensuing panic.
Greedy Capitalists?
The PBS documentary conveys the message that the two owners of the Triangle factory refused to become a closed union shop, therefore it remained unsafe. However, as the PBS documentary shows, the two owners compromised on other union demands regarding hours and pay. Thus, the striking workers resumed their work. According the documentary, these two owners were some kind of holdout while other factory owners obliged to closed union shops. Owners who agreed to closed union shops are subject of its own, which we cannot cover here.
The PBS documentary is to be commended that at least it portrays the two owners of the factory as having come to the US as poor immigrants themselves who worked their way up.
To its credit, the PBS documentary also mentions that their factory was one of the better ones in terms of working conditions. It was brighter because of big windows and not as dirty and cramped than those “sweat shops”.
No matter how greedy a capitalist might be, I suspect only a few would probably like to have their property go up in flames and be completely destroyed. The PBS documentary mentions that the two owners collected on some kind of insurance, but, I believe, no details were given. Here is Wikipedia on this: “The jury acquitted the two men, but they lost a subsequent civil suit in 1913 in which plaintiffs won compensation in the amount of $75 per deceased victim. The insurance company paid Blanck and Harris [the two owners of the factory] about $60,000 more than the reported losses, or about $400 per casualty.”
History And Statistics
Unfortunately or as expected the American Experience documentary only bothers to mention that this fire was the worst workplace accident in New York city’s history. How many other such accidents were related to fire? How often did they occur?
And of course, because big government stepped in to control and regulate an industry etc. such deadly fires would rarely occur anymore hence. This is the accepted success narrative by big government and its adherents.
Well, Wikipedia offers a webpage with a list of historic, disastrous fires worldwide starting with antiquity. I have no idea whether this list is complete or accurate etc.
Anyway, according to this list, disastrous fires of businesses killing large numbers of workers were fairly rare worldwide in the 18th to early 20th century. If this is correct, then the big government control and regulation measures that followed the Triangle event were a typical government overreaction intensified by certain interest groups such as unions, fire fighters, building safety engineers and so on.
